Oh yeah. Are you listening John McCain? A supposedly "vetted" commando, trained in US soil by Blackwater, trained in counter-terror tactics…. JUST defected to ISIS. Watch the video where he says he would love to come and kill us Americans in our cities.

Yup. Trained by Blackwater. And as of today, a bearded ISIS commander.

How idiotic that we are creating thousands more of these "vetted" foreign Muslim militants among the "moderate" Syrian rebels.

It's a video so I didn't watch but was he only a Blackwater contractor or a Vet or both?

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Neither.

He was a Tajik who was trained at a Blackwater-owned facility in the US. He doesn't appear to speak English, and as far as his military skills? He shot a tomato with a sniper rifle from a distance of about twenty meters.

All this story tells me is how little the US media, and watching public, really understand about ISIS, and why people would even consider joining such an organization.

We have misunderstood the nature of the Islamic State in at least two ways. First, we tend to see jihadism as monolithic, and to apply the logic of al‑Qaeda to an organization that has decisively eclipsed it. The Islamic State supporters I spoke with still refer to Osama bin Laden as “Sheikh Osama,” a title of honor. But jihadism has evolved since al-Qaeda’s heyday, from about 1998 to 2003, and many jihadists disdain the group’s priorities and current leadership.

He ends the article with the following, which I think should prompt an American leader with guts to allow the military to do the kind of job they know how to do: Kill the enemy. Not unlike what had to be done with the Japanese under Hirohito, who simply were not going to quit, and who are now productive members of the world.

Atlantic Magazine concludes:
Nor, in the case of the Islamic State, its religious or intellectual appeal. That the Islamic State holds the imminent fulfillment of prophecy as a matter of dogma at least tells us the mettle of our opponent. It is ready to cheer its own near-obliteration, and to remain confident, even when surrounded, that it will receive divine succor if it stays true to the Prophetic model. Ideological tools may convince some potential converts that the group’s message is false, and military tools can limit its horrors. But for an organization as impervious to persuasion as the Islamic State, few measures short of these will matter, and the war may be a long one, even if it doesn’t last until the end of time.

This has been a growing problem for the US military, as it tries to fight wars by proxy.

Green on blue attacks in Afghanistan, have been for some time the main cause of casualties, it even caused the death of a General.

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Quote

U.S. officials identified the general killed in Afghanistan on Tuesday as Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene, who became the highest-ranking U.S. military officer killed in combat since 1970.

Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said earlier that the assailant fired into a group of international soldiers at the Marshal Fahim National Defense University at Camp Qargha, a base west of Kabul, and was subsequently killed.

Another 15 people, roughly half of them Americans, were wounded. Among the wounded were a German brigadier general, two Afghan generals and an Afghan officer, whose rank the Afghan Defense Ministry did not provide.

The attack occurred during a site visit to the university by coalition members.

Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said a "terrorist in an army uniform" opened fire on both local and international troops.

He ends the article with the following, which I think should prompt an American leader with guts to allow the military to do the kind of job they know how to do: Kill the enemy..

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You must have missed this part:

Quote

And yet the risks of escalation are enormous. The biggest proponent of an American invasion is the Islamic State itself. .....An invasion would be a huge propaganda victory for jihadists worldwide: irrespective of whether they have given baya’a to the caliph, they all believe that the United States wants to embark on a modern-day Crusade and kill Muslims. Yet another invasion and occupation would confirm that suspicion, and bolster recruitment. Add the incompetence of our previous efforts as occupiers, and we have reason for reluctance. The rise of ISIS, after all, happened only because our previous occupation created space for Zarqawi and his followers.

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There is probably a military solution to ISIS. But there are a whole bunch of reasons that Americans (or Brits) can't be the ones doing the actual fighting.

There is probably a military solution to ISIS. But there are a whole bunch of reasons that Americans (or Brits) can't be the ones doing the actual fighting.

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I just wish someone would come up with an alternative to the three options that seem to be there now, continuing doing what we are doing with airstrikes isn't working and is just wasting money and making people upset with us anytime we accidentally hit the wrong targets and get civilians, Sending in ground troops would probably work short term, but is what ISIS wants and would just get us stuck there until we pull out again and everything falls to pieces as we leave, but at the same time doing nothing seems like an equally bad option that probably will lead to problems for us in the future as well.

It's a video so I didn't watch but was he only a Blackwater contractor or a Vet or both?

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Neither. He was a foreigner, a Tajikistan native… who was trained in Blackwater's training camp in the USA. Trained as a counter-terror expert. After receiving some years of US-taxpayer-funded training… he goes back home to his Islamic-oriented nation (in Central Asia) and then decides to join ISIS so he can slaughter Americans. A major flaw in US foreign policy, methinks.

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